Medical symptoms of many types of conditions can be difficult to detect by medical professionals if they occur over an extended period of time. Currently, medical diagnostics such as blood pressure readings and glucose readings are taken at doctors' offices or blood laboratories. The readings are then collected manually and depend on the patient's state of health at that particular time. In some cases, individuals take home readings to assist doctors to better determine medication identification and levels. This data depends on the patient's proficiency and accuracy at taking readings, and is hard for the physician to analyze and is normally communicated only at a doctor's visit. Typically, the patient is diagnosed and medicated based on a minimum amount of data and analysis, which furthermore is not presented to the doctor in a format that facilitates diagnosis. Each reading is presented by a lab report on a separate page, or by an individual manually listing out his own readings with the date and time that these readings are taken--often in irregular intervals.
Diagnosis of many types of medical conditions, such as hypertension, hypoglycemia, obesity, diabetes mellitus, or any disease or condition that requires long-term profiling of one or more variables such as pulse rate, blood pressure, percent body fat, glucose level, cholesterol level, white blood cell count, T-cell count, etc. to effectively diagnose and treat can be markedly improved by a system to consolidate the data and present the data in a format which facilitates such diagnosis.
For the purpose of illustration, consider the condition known as diabetes mellitus, which is a common form a diabetes characterized by inadequate secretion or utilization of insulin, a hormone that regulates blood-sugar levels in the body. According to research done by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 1989 there was approximately 6.7 million individuals who reported having diabetes mellitus, and it was estimated that an equal number had the condition, but were unaware of it. Diabetes mellitus results in excessive urine production, thirst, hunger, and loss of weight, and can be very disruptive of a person's life. This condition is treatable, but proper treatment depends on accurate long-term profiles of a patient's blood sugar levels. In addition, people who suffer from diabetes mellitus are also at increased risk for heart disease, and should monitor their heart rate and blood pressure at regular intervals. Doctors working with diabetes patients must inspect a great deal of data associated with tracking the disease. Diabetes patients often measure the blood sugar level two, three, four, or five times a day. Patients typically will take their own blood-sugar level readings using a hand-held medical instrument, and record the readings by writing the results on a chart, which is presented to the medical practitioner during a scheduled appointment.
Medical practitioners, who are increasingly working with more patients with fewer time devoted to each patient, simply do not have time to carefully review a stack of hand-written record sheets to determine whether a patient's recent readings are significantly improved in comparison to the patient's previous readings. The present invention addresses this problem by providing accurate records with simple and versatile input and output of the information from a centralized data base. Trends are easily spotted, as are erratic or cyclic readings. Thus, diagnosis and treatment of a disease such as diabetes mellitus becomes quicker and more accurate for improved results.